


Oceans of Ashes

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Art, Drabble, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post Comics, sketch - freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 07:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art work and a short drabble set post Comic'verse, inspired by the song Reach by The Butterfly Effect</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oceans of Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone can't read my handwriting the text in the picture is _"I'm walking through your field of broken flowers. They fall upon my face like tears for hours."_
> 
> Thanks to Cougars_catnip, jujitsuelf and quandong_crumble for the read through and for telling me my art doesn't suck. 
> 
> This piece was a long time coming, it's been in my head for a very long time, and I procrastinated drawing it for so long, but yesterday I finally sat down and drew it. And it's not perfect, far from it, but I'm happy enough with the results, and didn't want to keep working on it, because I have a habit of overworking a picture and just making a mess of it and ruining it. So I'm leaving as is.

 

He goes back, six months later, and changes the plaque on the memorial, correcting the date so that it shows the day the nuke detonated in New Jerusalem, and not the day of the helicopter crash. 

He only changes the one, not touching Clay's or Roque'. But he's tempted to change his too. Because even though he made it out of that pipe room, part of his is sure that he died that day. He knows he's still living and breathing, but that doesn't change the fact that he should have died there alongside of Cougar. He feels like he's dead and his body just hasn't caught up with that fact yet. 

 

A year after, he doesn't go back, though he still carries the old plaque around in his pocket. After getting back from Antigua and catching up with Pooch, he goes to the memorials for the two World Wars and sits amongst the poppies, tying not to crush the delicate petals when he plucked one of the flowers. 

He tries not to think of the loss, even though it sits so heavily beneath his ribs. A year and nothing has changed. Endless nights of waking thinking Cougar is there, only to come crashing back down to reality with the echo of an explosion and the blinding light still burning beneath his eyelids. Dreams of Cougar being right there, just out of reach, and he finds himself waking with his hands outstretched and his arms empty. The name on his lips that he hasn't been able to bring himself to say in all that time, because he knows that Cougar isn't there to hear it, to hear him, to be that calm still presence beside all of his chaos, and he knows he's slipping, losing grip on reality, because he sees his shadow on rooftops, against the skylines. Thinks the sheets are crumpled on the other side of the bed, even though no one has been there. He wakes, gasping, sweat, and fear, reaching for someone who can't possibly be there anymore. 

 

Two years after, when all he can remember is the burning, and blood, and how Cougar started slipping away from him after Afghanistan, he goes back to the poppy fields again. The flowers have been ravaged by the winds, delicate petals scatter through the air, and he stands there, letting them blow against him, falling on his face like tears, clinging to the fabric of his clothes, in his hair, for a desperate second before they blow away again. 

Amongst the swirling petals, he's sure he sees Cougar, hat pulled down low over his eyes, hair whipped over his shoulder by the wind. It's so much more real than ever before, and he can't stop himself from calling out his name, choked out and too tangled up in emotion. Cougar turns, lifts his head to look at him, and he finds himself reaching out again, and hoping this time it isn't to empty space. 


End file.
